No, I don’t mean it in the way you think. It is not through the pen that this story is told: it is from the pen.
Take, for instance, this scratch in the handle of this Chinese wolf hair calligraphy brush. This brush is probably two hundred years old; see the lettering on the side? That’s probably the year it was made and the name of the maker…or maybe the writer: sure wish I could read it.
Anyways, what could this scratch tell us? Did the writer bite it for stress or just a bad habit? Was it dropped from a height? Was it jostled in a box of precious belongings as an ox cart carried it away from areas of unrest?
And here, see the dent in the ferule of a French sable brush? I bought this little beauty in a garage sale among some normal painting brushes. Boy, didn’t they know it wasn’t normal? Couldn’t they tell that some little French man with monstrous mustachio threw it across the room in a fit of anger? Couldn’t they see the frightened eyes of his maids in it? Couldn’t they tell by the peeled paint and teeth dents that he had chewed it while conducting his most stressing parts of his art?
And so many more tools speak out to those who can listen. This fountain pen with half a nib: school boy, circa 1925, broken during a test when the headmaster yelled at him for cheating. This quill pen was probably used to write out long figures of incoming cargo on the wharfs of Boston. Maybe even those famous packages of tea.
And here! Here’s a ball point pen I picked up off from the street. Imagine that! The blue, see-through plastic is all broken on one side and the metal point is badly scratched; I doubt the ball itself is still in good repair. What could story could this pen, this scum of all writing instruments tell me?
Wait; watch as I arrange it with the others. The super-old, prestigious Chinese calligraphy brushes (that I acquired for a four-figure sum…each) the brushes, the fountain pens, the papyrus reed pens (that I stole from a library in Egypt) the quills that very well might have signed the Declaration of Independence.
Now look. What does this arrangement tell you? If they were people, with millionaires and movie-stars surrounding this little John-Doe with over-sized nose, freckled skin and callused hands…what would happen? You may see in your head the little blue pen turning away, or, like a cornered rat, dropping his head and not daring to even look at his fellow humans.
But that’s not what I see. This little blue pen, with scratches and bruise worthy of any other famous battle, would stand up straight and tall (is there any other way for a pen to stand?) and speak out his memories, wounds, problems, views, feelings and ideas just as loudly as the other pens. After all, as a pen, doesn’t he have rights?
So you see, a pen can tell a story.
You just have to listen.
Spoiler! :
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